El hándicap de la vida

After traveling more than half the world -the United States of America, Australia, Japan- and forging a great reputation as a writer, Kipling collected at the end of 1891 stories compiled in his youth travels as a journalist through his native country, India. Most of them had been previously published in The MacMillan's Magazine, and all of them present that mysterious atmosphere resulting from the coexistence of a multitude of religions, languages, races and gods. Through its pages parade fakirs, elephants and old wise men like the beggar storyteller Gobind, who told his stories "with a voice very similar to the thunder of heavy artillery on a wooden bridge". The author of The Handicap of Life learned from him to narrate adventures, just as his teacher Stevenson did before him, with a vigorous and direct language that seems to follow the beat of a military band. They all have that peculiar flavor of spices that they like so much on the other side of the Black Water, which is what the Hindus call the ocean.